YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN ABRIDGED
OR
"GENE WILDER, LORD HOW WE MISS YOU TO PIECES"
A "Broadway Abridged" Script
By Gil Varod
SCENE: LOBBY OF THE HILTON THEATRE, THE SHITTIEST BARN YOU
COULD CHOOSE FOR A COMEDY.
Mel Brooks, Thomas Meehan, and Susan
Stroman are sitting around a table.
DIRECTOR SUSAN STROMAN
Despite the fact that it went out with a whimper,
further deadened by my why-can't-I-figure-out-how-to-operate
a-frickin'-camera movie version,
"THE PRODUCERS" remains one of the best-reviewed musicals of
recent history. So have you guys considered doing another
musical?
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Mel's already written a perfect movie with a standard musical
comedy ready plot and larger-than life characters.
DIRECTOR SUSAN STROMAN
Which movie?
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Well isn't it obvious that the best candidate for
musicalization is--
MEL BROOKS
Young Frankenstein.
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
--Robin Hood, Men in Tights. Wait, what?
MEL BROOKS
Young Frankenstein!
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Young Frankenstein doesn't naturally sing! And Men in Tights
already has 4 songs in it, and is coherent with a sensible
plot arc--
MEL BROOKS
How many Tony Awards do YOU have?
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Are we counting just "Best Book", or also "Best Musica--
MEL BROOKS
Cause I have nintey-bajillion.
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
That's not a real number.
MEL BROOKS
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN THE MUSICAL. Foot's down.
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Actually, that might work!
You know how THE PRODUCERS was a parody of Golden Age
musicals? We make this one a parody of big 80s British Mega
Imports!
We just need a person who has the musical ability to write
dark, overly-brooding music. Someone who can
"out-Frank-Wildhorn" Frank Wildhorn. Hmm.
MEL BROOKS
(not paying attention)
What are you doing?
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Trying to figure out who can write a Horror-Movie score.
MEL BROOKS
Why?
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Because we need to have a composer who...
MEL BROOKS
(grins)
CO-WRITER THOMAS MEEHAN
Oh no. In the holy name of Irving Berlin...
MEL BROOKS
Has anybody seen my tape recorder? I feel a bouncy-yet
forgettable song coming...
SCENE: MEL BROOKS' EGO, ONSTAGE, IN THE FLESH.
Chorus enters.
Not make-up'd and costume'd like
they're in black and white or anything,
of course. Because that would mean we
still give a shit about sending up
universal's monster movies.
CHORUS
(singing)
WE'RE THE HAPPIEST TOWN IN TOWN
THE HAPPIEST TOWN IN TOWN!
THIS IS THE PRODUCERS'S OPENING NUMBER
DEVOID OF ANY JOKES
CAUSE WE'RE THE HAPPIEST TOWN IN TOWN!
VILLIAGE IDIOT CHARACTER
What does "The Happiest Town in Town" mean?
CHORUS
It's a joke.
VILLIAGE IDIOT CHARACTER
What's the joke?
CHORUS
$450 is *always* the joke!
VILLIAGE IDIOT CHARACTER
(utters a few unbearable one
liners)
AUDIENCE
Wow. It must be really difficult to make a village idiot
character FUNNY.
SCENE: DR. FRANKENSTEIN'S UNIVERSITY.
Enter NOT GENE WILDER.
ROGER BART
(mugging)
And that is today's lesson, students. Any questions?
STUDENT
Mr. Bart, I understand that your forbearer reanimated the
dead.
ROGER BART
(mugging)
It can't be done! The brain tells us that once something has
been put peacefully to rest, you cannot revive it.
STUDENT
And yet here you are, playing the Gene Wilder role.
ROGER BART
(singing, mugging)
THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A BRAIN
A BRAIN TELLS YOU THAT YOU CAN DO A HALF-ASSED ADAPTATION
AND YES, A BRAIN REALIZES THAT I AM ACTUALLY A TALENTED
COMEDIC ACTOR IN MY OWN RIGHT
BUT IF A BRAIN CONVINCES YOU THAT YOU CAN PUT ME
IN A ROLE PERFORMED SO WONDERFULLY BY GENE WILDER
AND GET AWAY WITH IT
YOU MUST NOT HAVE...
A BRAIN!
RAUL ESPARZA,
NORBERT LEO BUTZ,
BRIAN D'ARCY JAMES,
EDDIE IZZARD
AND... UMM... HELL,
ROSIE O' DONNELL
Come one! AT least ONE of us had to have had free time in
our schedule!
ROGER BART
(speaking, mugging)
Now let me demonstrate how the Brain works. In the original
movie, Gene Wilder took this patient...
(stands up a patient)
And kicked him in the balls, like THIS!
He does so.
ROGER BART
(mugging)
Notice that when Gene Wilder did it, he was so otherwise
serious that the change in behavior came as a shock to you.
But as you can see from my incessant mugging...
(mugs)
(dramatic pause)
(mugs again)
NOBODY IS LAUGHING!
"Students" rise and applaud wildly.
MEL BROOKS
On the nights that there aren't enough tourists to create a
standing ovation,
(watches the applauding
"students")
I just think back to this point in the show and pretend...
SCENE: IN FRONT OF A SHIP OF SOME SORT.
Enter Megan Mullally.
ROGER BART
(mugs)
Darling I'm off to Transylvania. Kiss?
MEGAN MULLALLY
Please, the lipstick the lipstick darling.
Also the hair.
And the nails.
ROGER BART
(chuckles to self, mugs)
Ah yes, that was quite a funny joke from the movie that the
audience laughed at even before it came. Well, goodbye.
MEGAN MULLALLY
(singing)
ALSO DON'T TOUCH MY MASCARA, AND MY EYESHADOW,
ROGER BART
(mugging)
Um...
MEGAN MULLALLY
(singing/dragging it out)
AND DON'T TOUCH MY EYELINER
AND DON'T TOUCH MY CONTACT LENSES
The cast spurts out into
the obligatory Susan Stroman
low-motivation high-concept
dance routine.
DIRECTOR SUSAN STROMAN
Look, they're all waltzing, but they're NOT TOUCHING EACH
OTHER! Oh wait, I think I forgot to give them their Susan
Stroman props this time.
CHORUS
(singing)
IF THERE EVER WAS A TIME
TO MISS THE OLD LADIES
AND THEIR TAPPING WALKERS
NOW IS IT!
MEGAN MULLALLY
(still singing, even the joke
ended some time ago)
(like 1974)
AND DON'T TOUCH MY TEETH, AND DON'T TOUCH MY...
TITS!
TITS!
IT IS FUNNY BECAUSE I SAID THE WORDS TITS!
Well to be fair, Megan Mullally gets +5
points for not acting like Karen from
Will and Grace.
SCENE: TRANSYLVANIA TRAIN STATION.
Enter some salvation:
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
Hey Roger!
ROGER BART
Hey Christopher! Let's waste your talent with a song!
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
I can't think of a song that would move the plot here.
ROGER BART
That's okay, let's just sing a buddy song!
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
But we just met--
ROGER BART
LIKE ABBOT AND COSTELLO
LIKE SONNY AND CHER
LIKE MARTIN AND LEWIS
WE'RE THE PERFECT PAIR!
The song continues on like this,
neither moving the plot nor being
humorous. Nor being entertaining.
AUDIENCE
(mind wandering)
Why aren't the songs funny?
Mel Brooks is a funny lyricist.
The songs in The Producers were funny!
AUDIENCE'S INTERNAL
MONOLOGUE'S ANTAGONIST
Were they really? Name some.
AUDIENCE
Well, there was...
"King of Broadway" was funny.
AUDIENCE'S INTERNAL
MONOLOGUE'S ANTAGONIST
No, the spoken one-liners in the middle were funny.
Name a song from Producers that had funny *lyrics*.
AUDIENCE
"Springtime for Hitler".
AUDIENCE'S INTERNAL
MONOLOGUE'S ANTAGONIST
(ruining "The Producers" for
you in retrospect)
OK. And?
AUDIENCE
And... and that's it.
And oh god I may very well be watching a real-life
"Springtime for Hitler".
ROGER BART AND
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD
(shouted while grimacing at the
audience)
WHAT HUMP?!?!?!?!?
A pregnant pause for laughter.
ROGER BART AND
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD
(real actual terrible lyrics)
Like Ginger and Freddy
McDonald and Eddie
Like San Juan and Teddy
(at the point that, musically,
there should have been a
joke:)
Like meatballs and spaghetti!
Enter Sutton Foster, kinda doing an
"Ulla" impression from The Producers.
AUDIENCE
No, no, please don't taint Sutton Foster.
Foster and Bart get into a hay wagon.
The scenery moves and two dancers in
costumes play the "horses" pulling the
wagon, while a projected effect makes
it look like they're MOVING.
It looks AWESOME ENOUGH to renew your
HOPE in this musical for another
fifteen minutes.
SUTTON FOSTER
(yodels, is very funny)
ROGER BART
(being humped by Sutton Foster
in the "Reverse Frog Squat"
position)
Well, I guess I now understand how I got this part over
Hunter Foster.
SCENE: WHAT IS THIS? ARE WE ACTUALLY SEEING OUR MONEY UP ON
THE STAGE?!!!!
ROGER BART
(asleep, tossing and turning)
(and mugging)
No, no, no!
SUTTON FOSTER
Wake up!
ROGER BART
(wakes up)
(mugs)
I dreamt that a Russian dancing troupe was using stupid
dancing and a crappy Frankenstein Marionette to convince me
to build a monster via Mel Brook's second Fiddler parody!
SUTTON FOSTER
Wow, some nightmare! BEtter not use it for actual character
transformation or anything.
A violin plays.
ROGER BART
Do you hear that noise?
SUTTON FOSTER
It sounds like... like...
ROGER BART
Like the sort of melancholy music this show should have had?
SUTTON FOSTER
YES! Let's go follow it!
They do, and find themselves running
into Andrea Martin with a violin.
ROGER BART
Gasp, Andrea Martin, that can't be your music!
ANDREA MARTIN
Because, I *stole* it!
ROGER BART
From who?
ANDREA MARTIN
From John Morris!
REST OF CAST
No!
ANDREA MARTIN
Who scored the original film!
REST OF CAST
No!
ANDREA MARTIN
AND SHOULD HAVE SCORED THIS AS WELL!
She sings a Marlene Dietrich ripoff
while doing a chair dance and, for the
first time in the show, the musical
tone actually makes sense!
ANDREA MARTIN
(effortlessly and slinging out
single-entendres)
Ovaltine! Starbucks! Erections! Bach! Balls!
ROGER BART
Andrea Martin, the jokes are so much funnier when you say
them. Perhaps Mel Brooks's problem is that Nathan Lane could
deliver an entire show consisting of one-liners and make it
work. Maybe they should have just crafted the entire show
around you and your ability to spout one-liners.
NATHAN LANE
(from balcony, because Mel
Brooks wouldn't comp him an
orchestra seat)
Dammit, everybody wants to be Nathan Lane!
SCENE: LABORATORY.
Roger Bart performs a wonderful little
ditty called "SUNG BOOK".
ROGER BART
The creature is alive. Alive!
Shuler Hensley rises from the dead and
reanimates!
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
Hey, what happened to the "Yummy" scene?
ROGER BART
What?
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
The scene where we're eating dinner, and the creature grunts,
and you insist that I made a "yummy noise"?
ROGER BART
For me to get the words "yummy noise" to be funny, I would
have had to play this character like the serious, straight
man that Gene Wilder played it as.
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
And?
ROGER BART
(mugs)
(mugs)
(mugs)
(mugs)
(mugs)
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
I won't even ask about you not stabbing yourself with a
scalpel.
ROGER BART
(mugs some more!)
SHULER HENSLEY
Wait, I'm the one in green makeup and platform shoes, and yet
*I'm* the only straight man?
SCENE: MEL BROOKS HIRED A CHORUS, REMEMBER?
CHORUS
We suspect that you have a monster inside your house.
ROGER BART & CO.
We'll distract you by singing a song that is about FIVE
PERCENT AS FUN AS THE MONSTER MASH!
They perform a rejected Thoroughly
Modern Millie number???
CHORUS
You did *not* just stop the plot for that.
THE SUPERBLY TALENTED
CHRISTOPHER FITZGERALD, ESQ.
You did *not* just call it a "plot".
SCENE: THE MONSTER HAS ESCAPED OR SOMETHING.
ROGER BART
Well if the monster escaped, then we should go find him!
SUTTON FOSTER
No, let's stay here and,
(singing)
LISTEN TO YOUR HEART
LISTEN TO YOUR HEART...
Holy crap Mel Brooks wrote a worse love song than "That
Face".
MEL BROOKS
You're wrong!
(actual words he said in
an NBC Nightly News Interview:)
There's sighs. You can hear the audience sigh like a wave:
"ahhh", when you do. I wrote a song called "Flush your brain
right down the drain and listen to your heart." It's...
Inga--the beautiful Nurse, played by the incredible Sutton
Foster--sings to Roger Bart, the Doctor. And I can hear
sighs in the middle of the song, just a wave of sighs and
it's just, it's better than chicken soup, and you can't beat
it.
SUTTON FOSTER
Wow Mel, you just might be deluded!
Nobody's going to "sigh" at a song whose purpose is
to get us to fuck.
SCENE: MEGAN MULLALLY IS IN THIS MUSICAL, REMEMBER?
MEGAN MULLALLY
Hey, it's me, I'm back! And with me are Sasha, Masha, Basha,
Tasha, and Bob.
Akward silence.
ANDREA MARTIN
So that was basically your sorry version of the gay
Choreographer/Costumer/Lighting Designer thing from The
Producers, wasn't it.
MEGAN MULLALLY
It was different; this one didn't have a joke!
ANDREA MARTIN
Ah.
Megan Mullally loses 7 points for not
being Madeline Kahn.
Total score so far on the
Mullally-o-Meter: -2.
SCENE: REMEMBER YOUR FAVORITE SCENE IN THE MOVIE? GUESS HOW
LONG WE CAN STRETCH IT OUT!
Shuler Hensley visits the old hermit.
OLD HERMIT
(sings for a few minutes)
SHULER HENSLEY
AND OLD HERMIT
(perform the scene almost
verbatim from the movie)
OLD HERMIT
(sings for another minute)
ERIC IDLE,
CREATOR OF SPAMALOT
Let me get this straight Mel. You wrote "The Producers".
MEL BROOKS
Yes.
ERIC IDLE,
CREATOR OF SPAMALOT
Then, as I've mentioned on my blog many times, I was inspired
by "The Producers" to make the inferior "Spamalot".
MEL BROOKS
Yes.
ERIC IDLE,
CREATOR OF SPAMALOT
Then you, inspired my method of basically taking each joke
from the movie and turning it into a 5 minute song, you made
this musical.
MEL BROOKS
Yes.
ERIC IDLE,
CREATOR OF SPAMALOT
It's fun to be rich, isn't it?
MEL BROOKS
Yes!
SCENE: PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ.
ROGER BART
And now, me and the monster will sing Puttin' on the Ritz.
Let it be known that if a video of this number ever leaked to
YouTube, nobody would ever feel it necessary to actually see
this show.
SHULER HENSLEY
(grunts in agreement)
They do the song.
IRVING BERLIN
(pounding on walls of his
coffin)
It's a damn good thing I'm dead, because if I were alive to
watch my song be surrounded by countless shitty Mel Brooks
specialty numbers, I'd rip that Jew a new hole!
DIRECTOR SUSAN STROMAN
We have to add fifteen minutes to the runtime; some audience
members are paying $3 a minute for this!
So you, dozen guys wearing platform shoes, dance along with
them!
They do.
DIRECTOR SUSAN STROMAN
Now the rest of the lead characters, you tap too for no good
reason!
They do.
DIRECTOR SUSAN STROMAN
Now... Um...
Well, you can tell I'm losing my touch because I'VE RUN OUT
OF IDEAS FOR HOW TO RUN THIS JOKE INTO THE GROUND.
SCENE: THE CREATURE ESCAPES AGAIN.
Yes, again. It was necessary when
convoluting this plot to have the
creature escape TWO SEPARATE TIMES in
order to bring in any dramatic tension
whatsoever.
I hear tale that some people are
accomplishing this with something known
as a "plot arc".
MEGAN MULLALLY
No, Shuler Hensley, don't rape me like the way this show just
did to "PUTTING ON THE RITZ"!
He does...
Apparently RAPE = FUNNY.
MEGAN MULLALLY
(singing)
OH SWEET LOVE OF LIFE AT LAST I'VE FOUND YOU--
MEL BROOKS
No, that's not what I wrote! Too subtle!
MEGAN MULLALLY
Fine.
(singing)
FINALLY I FOUND DEEP LOVE
LOVE THAT HAS IS DEEP
LOVE THAT IS LONG
LOVE THAT IS THICK
LOVE THAT IS IN THE LITERAL SHAPE OF A PENIS...
(pause, sighs)
Come on Mel, throw me a bone!
MEL BROOKS
A bone? Oooh, that one works too!
(sings into tape recorder)
Megan Mullally gets +5 sympathy points
for having the three worst songs in the
show.
(Final Mullally-o-Meter score: +3.
Good for you, Megan Mullally!)
SCENE: DENOUEMENT.
CHORUS
We are angry at you for mugging too much, Roger Bart, and so
we will kill you!
(they do)
ROGER BART
I am dying!
(does some more "wacky" crap,
then "dies")
SHULER HENSLEY
(possibly the only one who
understands that you have to
take comedy as serious as
drama)
No, you killed my master! But that's okay, because somehow
or another I apparently know how to CANCEL OUT DEATH or
something.
He does, and is apparently a good
enough actor to make the horribly
cheesy ending work.
SHULER HENSLEY
See? Sometimes it's funny to NOT WINK AT THE AUDIENCE THIRTY
TIMES A SECOND!
The show's wrapping up about now:
CHARACTERS WHO END UP
ROMANTICALLY INVOLVED
I love you, character I ended up with romantically and half
assedly!
ANDREA MARTIN
I have a "blind date"! With the Blind Guy! Get it?
Ahahahahah...
(sighs)
This is my final joke for the evening; sad no?
DRACULA
Hi, Roger Bart, I've come by to ask if you want to sell me
your house.
ROGER BART
(mugs)
Oh good, Dracula! So, what hysterical Dracula jokes are you
going to tell?
DRACULA
Um...
Um...
LOOK IS THAT A MEL BROOKS POST-CURTAIN GOODBYE SONG?
Chorus comes out and the finale,
hinting at what may be the next movie
he musicalizes...
AUDIENCE
Oh god please don't destroy Blazing Saddles...
VERY DEPRESSING BROWN-OUT.
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